Empowering users with Microsoft / Office 365

#Microsoft365 #Office365 #MSTeams During the last couple of days we saw quite a few additions to Microsoft Teams. One of these being the Command Box. I consider it the Windows Button for Teams as I can now search for anything – from anywhere inside my Microsoft Teams App.

DISCLAIMER: I WRITE ARTICLES ABOUT OFFICE / MICROSOFT 365. CONTENT IS ACCURATE AT TIME OF PUBLICATION, HOWEVER UPDATES AND NEW ADDITIONS HAPPEN DAILY WHICH COULD CHANGE THE ACCURACY OR RELEVANCE. PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND WHEN USING MY BLOGS AS GUIDELINES.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams brings together the full breadth and depth of Office 365, to provide a true chat-based hub for teamwork and give customers the opportunity to create a more open, fluid, and digital environment. Microsoft Teams is built on existing Microsoft technologies woven together by Office 365 Groups. Read more…

Command Box:

Command apps, take quick actions, and search—all from the command box – A new command box integrates commanding with search. From here, you can quickly query or command an app and for example search for information, such as an image in Adobe Creative Cloud or a news article.

You can also take quick actions with slash commands. For example, you can use a slash command to set your status to “away,” or call a coworker. To get started with slash commands, type / to see the list of commands currently available. Read more…

Slash commands:

Start with the slash and see the different commands you can use:

Use the @ to add different resources:

Add News, Places, Stocks, Weather, Wikipedia, YouTube and more.

Type to search:

Find people and documents:

Find channels & teams:

Challenge:

This is a great feature, but remember that you have to train your users to stop navigating and start searching. Most people are still stuck in the See / Navigate mode:

See

A perfect example of this would-be people putting files on their desktops. That also goes for shortcuts to programs, sticky notes on your desktop and mailing yourself a mail again so you can see it first in your Inbox tomorrow morning.

Navigate

The natural progression from shortcuts to every program on your desktop was to click on the Start button, go to programs (control panel), then select the program (setting) you want to open. Or going to File Explorer and double-clicking your way into the deep, dark maize you call your File Share folders. I’m also thinking of the countless folders I see in users’ mail Inboxes.

Search

The World Wide Web (WWW) taught us to search. Sadly, it seems this skill stayed confined to the web browser and search engine. By now users should be using the Windows button to search for programs, files and settings, but they’re not.

Discover

How do I discover content daily? FaceBook suggests articles I might want to read, Google changes my search results based on previous searches, YouTube shows videos I might want to watch, Pinterest compiles content in boards for me to enjoy and in Microsoft Office I use the Recent Files and Shared with Me to find files faster, Delve / Office Graph also is giving me results based on content and people I work with etc.

Purpose of this blog challenge: I will write 365 blogs in 365 days around Microsoft 365. I did a similar challenge with Office 365, blogs can be found here. I won’t just be talking about the new Microsoft 365 subscription model. I will be sharing any news, tips and tricks around Office / Office 365 / Windows / Mobility and Security. And let’s not forget all the great new Apps & services available. A lot of what I’ll share on Office and SharePoint will also be applicable to none “Office 365” versions.